The House of Representatives recently voted to stop all government funding to Planned Parenthood, and this week the Senate will cast its vote. It is vital that we all contact our Senators and illustrate how detrimental Planned Parenthood is to our nation. Today's commentary provides the necessary tools for both locating and talking to your Senator.

In light of recent events, and because thousands of people contacted their Representatives, the House has voted to cease the disbursing of federal funds to Planned Parenthood — at least through September 30 of this year. The next hurdle is to educate those in the Senate so that they, too, vote to defund Planned Parenthood.

The push to enlighten Congress and to encourage its members to vote to defund Planned Parenthood is not solely a pro-life matter. Granted, Planned Parenthood operates the largest abortion chain in the United States, but it is also so much more. Planned Parenthood infiltrates classrooms and gives its own sick brand of sexual education to our children. Planned Parenthood advertises its salacious "services" in venues it knows that teens and young adults view. Planned Parenthood's web site encourages young people to explore sexuality in any form and to allow feelings of gratification to take precedence over morality. Planned Parenthood lies to protect child predators and the sex trafficking of minors, and it even encourages these practices by offering advice on how to circumvent laws and authority. So, while Planned Parenthood slaughters more babies than any other organization in the country, it also contributes to the destruction of the well-being, the lives, and the souls of countless numbers of children, adolescents and young people on a daily basis. And it is doing so with our tax dollars.

It is essential that the United States Senators know the devastation that Planned Parenthood causes. It is time that the government stops using tax dollars to fund an organization so fraught with immorality, decadence, and corruption. Our goal this week must be to contact our Senators to tell them we expect a vote to defund Planned Parenthood.

We cannot stay silent in this matter. Nor can we pass this duty off to others with the assumption that someone else will make the calls and register the protests. We must all speak up and make our voices heard.

To facilitate a productive conversation with your Senator, ALL has gathered a plethora of information with which to arm you. Be sure to mention the following facts and stress that this is not only a pro-life matter. Planned Parenthood's tentacles can stretch to everyone in nearly all walks of life. Explain that Planned Parenthood is a detriment to many facets of our society and that our tax dollars should not be given to an organization that is so steeped in depravity and lawlessness.

Facts about Planned Parenthood

1) Planned Parenthood runs the largest abortion chain in the nation. According to its annual reports, Planned Parenthood has ended each fiscal year since 1987 with a profit. In 2009, its profit was $63.4 million. That same year, it reported receiving $363.2 million from government grants and programs.

2) Planned Parenthood's business model is, indeed, abortion-centered — though it claims abortion is only 3 percent of its business. In reality, abortion generates 40.6 percent of Planned Parenthood's clinic income. According to Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood director who became pro-life, the organization imposes abortion quotas on its clinics. Furthermore, over the next two years, Planned Parenthood will require every affiliate to have at least one clinic that offers abortions.

3) Planned Parenthood employees have been caught repeatedly on video encouraging young people and their abusers to withhold information about their age and the age of their sexual partners so that it's possible to avoid the mandatory reporting to law enforcement. Recently, Planned Parenthood staff members were caught on video collaborating with self-identified sex traffickers of young girls and coaching them on ways to profit off of these girls in the weeks following an abortion.

4) Planned Parenthood has been given billions in tax dollars, yet it lacks accountability for this money. A report from the Government Accountability Office gleaned from Planned Parenthood's Single Audit Act reports show that Planned Parenthood failed to account for $1.3 billion dollars in government funding received between the years 2002-2008.

An organization capable of such atrocities and illegal activities should never receive funding from the government. It is imperative that you contact your Senators to tell them you will be watching their votes this week.

Judie Brown

Judie Brown is president and co-founder of American Life League, the nation's largest grassroots pro-life educational organization... (more)

Judie Brown is president and co-founder of American Life League, the nation's largest grassroots pro-life educational organization.

She has served three terms as a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life in Rome. Daily Catholic cited her as one of the top 100 Catholics of the 20th century.

Judie has appeared on 20/20, 60 Minutes, Mother Angelica Live, The O'Reilly Factor, Good Morning America, Today, Oprah, and Larry King Live, as well as hundreds of other television and radio talk shows. Her comments regularly appear in major print media nationwide, and she has written numerous editorial pieces for magazines and newspapers, including The Washington Post and USA Today.

Judie is married to Paul A. Brown, and they have three children and nine grandchildren. She and her husband have been involved in the pro-life movement since 1969.